– FAUSTO GOMEZ OP
Conscientious objection refers to an individual person’s objection or refusal to perform certain actions demanded by law that he or she considers contrary to fundamental human rights and basic ethical principles. Conscientious objection may be required by freedom of conscience and/or religious freedom.
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Through history, conscientious objection has been manifested in general in civil disobedience, social protests and strikes, including the hunger strike, and in particular, in personal refusal, from conscience or faith, to obey an unjust law. Today the individual’s recourse to conscientious objection is shown in a growing opposition to obligatory military service and bearing arms, to party politics, and especially to some health care laws. In this context, it is interesting to note that Pope Francis extends the practice of conscientious objection to education: “The Church strongly affirms her freedom to set forth her teaching and the right of conscientious objection on the part of educators” (Amoris Laetitia, 279).
Freedom is the characteristic par excellence of the nature of the human being. By nature, all human persons are free and responsible. This personal responsible freedom may at times ask individuals to practice conscientious objection as many have done through history by reason of ethical, political and/or religious motivations.
Conscience is the subjective norm of morality, in a sense our main superior. Our personal conscience urges us to do good and avoid evil, to follow its dictates through our life. Following our own personal conscience implies a well-formed, up-right and a true and responsible conscience. A Christian knows that he or she has to be faithful to Christ, to God’s Word and words. A Christian is asked to follow his/her conscience – a conscience that listens to the law of reason, natural law, the basic moral law and the teachings of the Word of God and Christian Tradition. It is important to note that, as Gandhi – eminent practitioner of conscientious objection – says well: “In matters of conscience the law of the majority has no place.”
Freedom of Conscience is an essential characteristic of human dignity and a fundamental human right. We read in the UN’s Declaration on Human Rights (1948), Art. 18: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” Freedom of conscience is a basic human right of all, and has a co-relative duty: the duty of respecting the conscience of others. Superiors, educators, counselors, politicians, doctors, legislators are asked to guide the consciences of others, not to substitute them. Pope Francis affirms: “We have been called to form consciences not to replace them” (AL, 37).
Religious freedom necessarily entails fidelity to God: “Each of us will be accountable to God” (Rom: 14:12). “The right to religious freedom is rooted in the dignity of the human person as a spiritual and rational being open to transcendence” (International Theological Commission, ITC, Religious Freedom for the Good of All, 2019, no. 40). Vatican II explains: Religious freedom “means that all people are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups and every human power so that, within due limits, nobody is forced to act against his convictions nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his convictions in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others” (Declaration on Religious Freedom Dignitatis Humanae, DH, 11). Civil authorities have the duty to respect and make others respect the fundamental right to religious freedom within the boundary of the common good (Religious Freedom for the Good of All, 40).
Freedom of conscience, or religious freedom is practice in life usually through personal conscientious participation or exceptionally through conscientious objection. The conscientious objectors cannot be forced to act against their personal conscience or faith. If public authority asks Christians to do something against their conscience they are obliged by their conscience (the voice of God in the soul), not to obey the government – or any other authority – by appealing to the human right of freedom of conscience, of religious freedom.
FAITH AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
With its lights and shadows, Christianity has favored conscientious objection from its beginning, from Jesus himself, who was and taught the truth, responsible freedom, and non-violent love. His first disciples followed him, as the Truth and freest person to walk on earth. We remember how Peter answered when he and John were asked by the religious authorities to keep quiet concerning the name (Jesus): “We have to obey God rather than men” (Acts, 4:18-19). These words bring to our memory similar words of St. Thomas More just before his execution in 1534: “I die as the King’s true servant, but God’s first.”
The first Christians refused to be soldiers or judges. St Martin of Tours (+397), a soldier in the Roman army and now patron of conscientious objectors, refused to join in a battle: “I am a soldier of Christ. It is not lawful for me to fight.” Rooted in the prophets of old and principally in the Prophet Jesus, this initial Christian stand for conscientious objection was followed thereafter by many Christians, particularly by martyrs and saints like St Francis of Assisi and St John Baptist Vianney, and much later by another great martyr: Blessed Franz Jaegerstaetter, who was beheaded for refusing to report for duty to Hitler’s army (cf. Gordon C. Zahn). Martyrs yesterday and today follow not the commands of secular authorities but of their faith, of their conscience, and defended with their own lives religious freedom: Martyrs offer a witness against the denial of religious freedom and a demand for regimes to protect it.
The initial Christian tradition – at times followed, at times sidelined and at times broken – was officially re-taken by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in Gaudium et Spes (cf. GS, 79). The recent teaching of the magisterium of the Church on the matter was spearheaded by Vatican II: Religious freedom is based “on the dignity of the human person”; therefore, “the right to religious freedom” ought to be recognized by civil laws (DH, 2). The State, however, is entitled – some authors underline – to restrain religious freedom if justice, peace and “the public order” truly require it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms: “Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters” (CCC, no. 1782).
The International Theological Commission has recently issued a significant document entitled Religious Freedom for the Good of All (released in April, 2019), where we read: “The church expects that its members can live their faith freely and that their conscience rights will be safeguarded. Living the faith can sometimes require conscientious objection.”
HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
A challenging issue today is the practice of conscientious objection by medical personnel. Health care professionals, physicians and nurses are obliged to appeal in their practice to their right of freedom of conscience and religious freedom, including conscientious objection. Their appeal to conscientious objection “must be protected not only from legal penalties but also from any negative effects on the legal, disciplinary, financial and professional plane” (John Paul II, EV, 74).” Others, therefore, ought not harass them in any way for practicing their basic right to conscientious objection when warranted.
In his pace-setting Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II sums up Christian tradition on this matter when he writes: “Abortion and euthanasia are crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection” (EV, 73). Not opposing or disobeying them when one is obliged to is immoral cooperation in evil. Politicians, Catholic legislators who sponsor or vote laws legalizing abortion and euthanasia are objectively and generally guilty of grave immoral cooperation (cf. EV, 73-74).
Canada, with some other nations, has legalized assisted suicide (2016) and is asking doctors that if their conscience does not allow them to participate, they must refer, that is, “derive” or effectively direct cases to others who are willing to assist in suicide. Ethically speaking, this is objectively immoral: indirect cooperation in evil. Neutrality here is not neutral. The physician’ vocation is to care always, heal when possible, but never to kill. They are obliged by their conscience and faith to defend the basic “right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Vitae, 1987).
We conclude with a well-known text from Martin Luther King, Jr., who practiced exemplarily civil disobedience and active non-violence to promote human rights: “Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor popular. But one must take it because it is right.”
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